This is the blog of writer and musician Hank Shteamer, whom you may reach at hank.shteamer@rollingstone.com. Thanks to all visitors, and especially commenters: I read your thoughts with care, even if I typically respond only in my head.

Monday, November 19, 2007

En road

getting ready to head out on the road with my band, Stay Fucked--whom you see above-- for a month (!). very excited, stressed, happy, tired, etc. should be a fun tour. check out the itinerary here and come on out to see us if we're playing your town. if anyone has done this before and has tips re: what to bring or what not to bring, i'm all ears.

*****

suffice it to say, i won't be on here much at all through New Year's. i leave you with a few updates and recommendations:

1) re: my upcoming writing stuff... had a fun time researching and interviewing Gene Ween re: his band's new album and career and all that stuff. check the Time Out site next Thursday, 11/29, and you'll be able to read that.

2) also, in a few weeks' time (not sure exactly when), my 2007 Top 10 (i.e., CDs i liked best this year) will be published via same mag, so keep an eye out for that if you're interested.

3) re: that list, one CD that isn't on it is "Nothing But Change" by the Octagon. believe me, it wasn't left out due to it not being an absolutely awesome rock album. it would, though, seem kinda dubious to plug it via my day job, simply b/c i am old friends with those boys and once played in a band w/ frontman Zack Mexico. however one slices it, it's an outstanding disc--raucous yet efficient, wrenchingly sad yet goofy at times; very, very raw yet poetic; daring; honest, even scarily so. i wonder what it must be like to play such emotionally up-front music. it's real and new and smart and, yes, extremely catchy. special nod to one of my drum heroes, Will Glass, who manages to make REAL jazz know-how and kit-tone sound at home inside punk-spirited indie rock--no small achievement (if you are really listening, you will hear Ed Blackwell and Levon Helm for sure). buy here, at the website of Serious Business, a label owned and operated by my also-bud Travis Harrison.

4) "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" is a viciously exhilarating picture. was not really prepared for the rawness and the relentless downward spiral, emotional wringer, etc. of this one. kind of feels more like a play than a movie in parts, but it is admirably single-minded. it just wants to show you what life looks like as it is just completely tanking--methodically, excruciatingly tanking. beware but don't miss, if you get my meaning.

5) am still working on my freelance piece on the remarkable percussionist Cleve Pozar. more news in early '08. meanwhile...

6) and i leave you with a gem. this is the theme song to Robert Altman's insanely weird winged-serial-killer drama/farce "Brewster McCloud" by one John Phillips, late of the Mamas and the Papas. surreal, scary, lush and like the movie, utterly fucked up. [this track was recorded around the time of "Jack of Diamonds," Phillips's second solo LP from the early '70s, which was not released at the time, but has just come out in CD form--this song appears as a bonus track on said CD. my thoughts on that disc will also be in the next issue of Time Out NY.]